Chapter 4 excerpt from “Get Real, Dr. Phil” (some satire)

This is chapter 4 from my latest book, “Get Real, Dr. Phil: Discrediting Television’s Most Overrated Psychologist” and this chapter starts to get into the guts of the book by picking apart Dr. Phil’s useless wisdom. 

Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Get-Real-Dr-Phil-ebook/dp/B00EZGMCA6

There’s a good amount of humor in this chapter, and I compare Dr. Phil’s advice to what one would read in a fortune cookie by quoting Dr. Phil and quoting popular fortune cookie sayings. Readers will see there’s little difference between the two, which should make us wonder why we listen to such a man for guidance.

 

CHAPTER 4

MARRIAGE RETREATS AND DR. FORTUNE COOKIE

 

Dr. Phil advocates men and women in troubled marriages try a “couples retreat” or “marriage retreat” instead of traditional marriage counseling. He’s not the only television psychotherapist who recommends that men and women who believe their marriage may be on the rocks should get away from it all to rediscover their love for each other.

What Dr. Phil and others of his class don’t understand is that such retreats are prohibitively expensive for most people, and when the economy is in the crapper and getting worse (Joe Everyday knows this, despite the media force-feeding us nonsense about things getting better), only the upper echelons of society can afford such opulence. There are marriages that would benefit greatly from couples retreats, but those marriages will never know how beneficial a retreat can be, because paying rent and eating take priority over private counseling. Perspective should be a requirement for psychologists, but Dr. Phil only understands what his wife barks at him.

For the sake of disclosure, I should mention that I was married at one point in my life. Like every other couple, my husband and I developed marital problems and we tried traditional counseling, but when that failed we attended a retreat for a few days. The advice helped for a while, but in the end we just weren’t compatible as partners and the marriage ended badly. The police never found his body.

What is a marriage retreat? The program is a personalized vacation-like hideaway for couples that need intensive marriage counseling, but who are not good candidates for traditional sit-down counseling in which sharp objects are often in close proximity (pens, pencils, corners of picture frames, hunting knives strapped to inner thighs, etc.). Marriage retreats can be the result of the scumbag husband having sex with a petite secretary while his wife sits at home on their anniversary waiting for flowers, champagne, a dinner of lobster and steak, followed by passionate and romantic sex. I told him if he ever did that to me no one would ever find his body, but he just wouldn’t listen.

Instead of getting a divorce, the couple seeking a different type of treatment will meet with two trained specialists, usually one man and one woman, so the husband and wife will each have a confidant during the process. In traditional counseling, the couple would meet with one counselor for an hour and just as the husband is sobbing about his various infidelities and the hidden bank account in the Cayman Islands, the counselor says, “Time’s up, see you next week,” and any chance for rehabilitation and trust goes out the window. Marriage retreats allow both parties comfort to open up and explore their true feelings and insecurities, and to take as much time as it allows for the purge of negative feelings, so beneficial information and techniques can heal the emotional wounds. 

For example, a typical three-day marriage retreat will partake in this schedule:

 

Preparation:

Questionnaires from each person will be filled out and submitted so the therapists understand just how screwed up the marriage is. The couple will then arrive at the retreat, usually by commercial airliner, private jet, or chauffeured limousine. 

 

Day One:

The troubled couple will meet with the therapists/counselors and discuss background information: familial origins, the current family environment, how the relationship began and the type of romance involved that kindled the passions of each person, etc. The husband and wife will then go to separate rooms where each will meet with his or her specific therapist to tailor his or her specific needs for the relationship to get back on the right path. These skills are then practiced throughout the remainder of the day between the troubled pair. By evening, the couple should be on the way to understanding each other on a deeper level about how the relationship began, why the marriage grew apart, and how to rekindle old flames. If that doesn’t stir any passions, it is suggested the couple think like teenagers and screw like rabbits all night.

 

Day Two:

This is more of an intensive session because it will deal with hot button subjects, such as infidelity, dishonor, past secrets – it all needs to come out in the wash, because if people cannot be honest about themselves then they can’t be honest with a partner. This is where the therapists will earn their money, because really skilled counselors can get people to bare their souls and shine a light on that which the individual thought he or she had buried forever. It’s only after a cathartic release of emotion to gain understanding that the couple can begin to heal wounds and experience a better marriage. Sex is assured that night, and with the Kama Sutra provided, it will be very interesting sex.

 

Day Three:

This will be a summary of what has been accomplished. The therapists will review the past sessions and encourage the couple to work on new communication skills. If there is an airplane trip back home, it is recommended all sex occur in one of the lavatories, though doggie-style is probably out of the question due to lack of space.

 

Some marriage retreats will provide aftercare, which are a series of follow-up questionnaires and additional communication work for when there are disagreements so the couple doesn’t fall back into harmful ways of miscommunicating. 

As I said before, my husband and I attended a marriage retreat and we had a similar experience. Well, I shouldn’t say it was a “similar” experience, because the facility was in Brazil and my ex ended up running off with Consuela, one of the maids, and after an exhaustive hunt by search and rescue, my emotionally drained husband was located on the banks of the Tietê River, but Consuela had apparently been eaten by piranha. How I wish it had been the other way around.

But whether it’s a marriage retreat or the couple tries to work things out on their own, it’s still going to come down to whether the two people are compatible in the long-term, along with trust, honesty and a willingness to sacrifice for the sake of the other person. While my first book was a relationship parody, there were a few lines that had true insight into how successful relationships should work:

 

• “The key to developing relationships and preserving existing ones is the ability to laugh at each other and ourselves, while continually being mindful that no one is perfect and no one has all the answers.”
• “We have to…truly appreciate each other. Live and laugh together, share your warmth and your knowledge, mutually rise to face challenges and strive to achieve common goals. That is the ultimate key to understanding each other and enjoying better relationships.”

 

John Gray’s advice, which is what I was parodying, is that women should be deferential to men in all aspects of marriage or a relationship – terrible advice for men and women living in the twentieth century and beyond. Dr. Phil does not subscribe to such a religiously fundamentalist approach, though he does often satisfy the religious crowd by alluding that couples should rely on faith instead of communication, but his advice is just as useless as John Gray’s because Dr. Phil is not consistent. One moment a couple needs to work on their relationship problems together, and the next moment the husband is the one who needs to put more effort into the relationship while the wife stands by with a rolling pin in one hand and the television remote in the other, gleaning what Dr. Phil suggests next for hardline feminists. While such advice satisfies the entertainment aspect that Dr. Phil’s producers require for people to continue watching his television program, he’s just wasting everyone’s time. 

Let’s face it – if a successful relationship was easy and only required advice from simpletons, everyone would have a successful relationship. But a lasting and satisfying relationship is difficult to achieve and even more difficult to maintain, which is why so few people experience real enjoyment and success.

Is my advice a panacea for relationship problems? It depends on how much effort people wish to put into it, and the willingness of both partners to listen and work toward the same goal. People could have all the desire in the world to foster a perfect relationship, but if both partners don’t have the same level of commitment, the chance for lasting love and happiness doesn’t seem realistic.

One does not need a doctorate in psychology to understand why a relationship has problems and how to fix it. All one needs is basic common sense, but there is a profound lack thereof among our dumbed down society. I blame the proliferation of garbage television shows like Dr. Phil, and The Doctors, and The View. We were not born imbeciles, but that’s how we have evolved and certainly how we are treated. If someone can’t figure out that the lack of respect and communication in his or her relationship is the reason why the relationship is failing, then he or she needs to turn off the television and read a book. But not a book by Dr. Phil. He’s had his moment to shine, and instead of using his fame and position to educate, his advice belongs in a fortune cookie. 

Without using Google as an assist, which four of these sentences are advice from Dr. Phil and which are popular sayings found in fortune cookies?

 

• Conquer your fears, or they will conquer you.
• You can’t change what’s happened in your life, but you can change how you respond to it.
• The world may be your oyster, but that doesn’t mean you’ll get its pearl.
• It’s better to be healthy alone, than sick with someone else.
• Winners do what losers don’t want to do.
• We can’t help everyone, but everyone can help someone.
• The only person you need to control to get happy, healthy and whole is you.
• Your happiness is connected with your outlook on life.

 

Whether or not you’re successful in choosing Dr. Phil’s four, just look at the list in totality and ask yourselves why you’re still reading or listening to such an idiot. If the best advice we can get is from a fortune cookie, why does anyone still watch Dr. Phil or daytime television at all?

The more television one watches, the stupider one becomes. That is a documented fact. Not only does the television have a hypnotic effect on the human brain after just ten seconds of viewing, but from the endless commercial manipulation, to the subliminal messages, to the violence we have come to accept as part of our society, to constantly having to tell people that they’re not smart and they need to watch more programs to improve their lives, we are getting dumber by the day. Just look into the dead cow eyes of the average American television viewer, waiting to be told how to think, what to buy, what to wear, what to drive, how to vote, what to drink and eat, and you’ll see the zombies we have become. No wonder Dr. Phil can make tens of millions each year peddling basic fortune cookie-like common sense – it’s because the rest of us have lost our common sense, thanks to staring at the idiot box day and night.

The cornerstone of any successful relationship is communication. One person acquiescing to the demands of the other is a recipe for failure, not success. There is equality, mutual understanding and commonality, or there is relationship dysfunction. I don’t know any family that doesn’t call itself dysfunctional anymore, because the type of cheap advice we’ve been raised on over the last forty years has no meaningful or practical application in our lives. 

I like to use a Band-Aid analogy for very serious problems. If we cut our arm and put a Band-Aid on it, by the time the wound has healed it’s going to hurt a little to pull the Band-Aid off because it’s stuck to the skin and we may have some hair around it, but we do it anyway. We suck it up, stuff a rag into our mouths, have someone hold us down by the shoulders, rip it off, and then scream like a banshee. That’s what I do; maybe you’re different.

Imagine for a moment if we put a Band-Aid over our wound and then refused to remove it? “It’s going to hurt,” we reason with ourselves, “so I’ll just leave it on a little while longer.” Within a week, the adhesive is now firmly stuck to the skin and we know it’s really going to hurt if we pull it off, so we keep ignoring it. Within a month new hair is covering the Band-Aid and even though it’s an embarrassment and an inconvenience, that new hair and the fact it’s stuck fast to the skin makes removing it an unbearable thought, so we continue to ignore it. Within six months, new skin has grown over the Band-Aid, and if it’s not surgically removed, we’re going to develop an infection, sepsis and gangrene, and possibly die. We’re now looking at time off work, unnecessary expenses, medication, surgery, etc., just because we didn’t want to endure a moment of pain. 

For anyone who suggests such a ridiculous way of handling a Band-Aid, he or she would be keelhauled and never taken seriously again. Enter Dr. Phil. The type of “get real” advice Dr. Phil’s viewers and readers expect of the man just doesn’t exist, and because he has dropped the proverbial ball by offering fortune-cookie advice, I have waded into waters in which he does not wish to swim.